


love rushes in

by moonbeatblues



Series: harder to speak when you're holding the machine [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, both in mech au and canon, i just think. i just think it's what happens., it makes so much sense in my head, not in any graphic detail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26101903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: Vokodo’s an ugly thing, swimming bulbous in the thin atmosphere. Heat ripples around him, distorting the sky. Fire bursts in tiny pockets where debris is caught too close or simply sheds from him, and when it burns out the remains trail ash down, down to the distant earth.“Hope you’re watching, psychopomp.”“Hmm?”“Ah, don’t worry.”Then, she gets shot.(artagan builds a traveler)
Relationships: Artagan & Jester Lavorre, Artagan & Vax'ildan, Jester Lavorre & The Traveler
Series: harder to speak when you're holding the machine [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672555
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	love rushes in

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song love rushes in by luke atencio, which is what i'm listening to rn!! a perfect song to fall out of the sky to

“You know, you’re not very brave.”

He thinks Vax missed being taller than him. It’s hard to give a statement like that any weight when you’re looking up to someone.

He puts a hand to his heart. “Well, thank you.”

“It’s not a compliment.”

“Oh, but it is, Vax’ildan.” He casts a look over all of them— out of their mechs, showing the signs of being rattled in them, like yolks in an egg. “Seeing how well bravery treats all of you. I don’t need to be brave. I need to be smart. In fact, I would say the latter prevents the former.”

They all look rather stonily at him, so he pretends to be interested suddenly in the haphazard schematic on his desk and deflects. “So, the materials. I won’t be getting them myself, of course— bruises would ruin my cowardly complexion, you see—“

—

They do the damn thing, of course.

Vecna builds himself a beautiful beast, all right, but aspirations are like a tower— you need to build ever higher, but the resources stay finite. You scrape the sky only to find you’ve been cutting at your foundation to craft your spire, and a tap has you tumbling back to earth.

He works and works on the Traveler, and doesn’t think about the psychopomp or the friends he left behind when the blaze of him across the sky burnt out.

He never comes up with a better name for it, too busy thinking about what it’ll be like to stand beneath a blue sky. A traveler for a traveler— it suffices. You only need a name if you’re going to be introduced to someone else, and that’s not exactly the plan.

He’d never thought about it before Vax’ildan, but he takes a moment as he puts the finishing touches on the cloaking mechanism to enjoy cowardice, to revel in safety by his own hand. He’s always been good at avoidance, and now he sees it realized.

The thought leaps unbidden that _cowards only live to watch the brave die for them_ , and he laughs shakily to dispel it. Maybe Vax’ildan is waiting on some gray shore to ferry him to places unknown, but he’ll be waiting forever.

—

It’s not brave, talking to her.

It’s one of the safest things he could do— she’s a child. No friends, no risk of exposure. There’s so much to be afraid of here that it becomes what keeps him going, just cataloguing it all. Strange big loud world, ocean roaring and ships crashing and business and politics and people and life always happening, so fast and so short, like lit brush, like moths. He sees a girl with her head propped on her fist, idly coloring in a flower on her bedroom wall, and he’s unafraid of what she could do.

Talking to Jester isn’t brave. It’s not breaking the rules he’s got for laying low.

But it is stupid.

—

“What’s it called?”

“The Traveler.”

Never named, never meant to be introduced. A rule broken. Jester punctuates it by clapping her little hands giddily. “It’s _beautiful_. Did you make it all yourself?”

“I did indeed.”

“Momma says Dad had one, but I don’t think it was this pretty. She said he even let her fly it one time, but that they ran into some bad guys and that’s how he decided he had to leave, to keep her safe.”

“Ah,” he says, having nothing better to say.

“Can I try yours out?”

She’s maybe three or four feet tall. Her hands wouldn’t even reach all of the controls, he thinks, from the chair.

“I don’t think so,” he says, and then surprises himself by tacking on “I’m sorry” when her face crumples, even moreso when he realizes he means it.

—

“Did you see the kids down at the beach?”

“I did.”

“Do you think—“ she twists her hands nervously. “I never had any friends before you. I don’t know how to make them.”

It’s like she’s punched him.

(Scanlan was funny. He’d offered even to take a look over Bigby the night before Saundor, and he’d seen a picture taped to Scanlan’s control panel, a young woman, scowling at the camera. _Who’s this,_ he’d said, tongue a little loose with borrowed wine, and Scanlan had sighed with his tongue and heart even looser and said, _my daughter,_ and the understanding had fizzled right out of him. He didn’t even try with the others, but losing the feeling of having a mirror in someone else for the first time, of commiserating, of talking, even, it lingers.

Scanlan came back ready to fight a god, and he mourned the loss of something he never really succeeded in having at all.)

“It just takes practice,” he says. “Making friends.”

He can see she’s close to crying, and it stabs at him. “How am I supposed to practice?” she whispers. “I can’t leave.”

He excuses himself and listens to her start to cry, sniffles and then sobs too full of feeling for a child, and then he goes to the Traveler sitting cloaked and cowardly in a cliff alcove, and gets to work.

—

“You know, I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks? I’m a little busy right now.”

He keeps talking like he hasn’t heard her.

On her dash, the indicator is bright, green and steady. It’s not the first time she’s run out of power on a mission before. Not even the second, or third, or fourth. It switches over automatically— not a big deal, but seeing that light blink on, she feels safe. Whole.

“You’re braver than me.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“You always were. I made this ship so it could never be found, and you’ve done more with it in plain view then i ever did in hiding. More with _me_.”

Vokodo’s an ugly thing, swimming bulbous in the thin atmosphere. Heat ripples around him, distorting the sky. Fire bursts in tiny pockets where debris is caught too close or simply sheds from him, and when it burns out the remains trail ash down, down to the distant earth.

“Hope you’re watching, psychopomp.”

“Hmm?”

“Ah, don’t worry.”

Then, she gets shot.

—

He doesn’t finish before it breaks bad.

The mechanism is— it’s complicated. Hard to keep himself himself.

He’s just decided to call it for the day when he hears feet kicking up sand towards the entrance, tearing at the hanging coastal plants.

“I messed up.”

She looks distraught when she gets through, breathing hard and face tracked with tears.

“Um—“

“I can’t go home. I don’t have anywhere else.”

He darts his eyes over to the Traveler and back again. Not finished, but serviceable.

“I—“

“You can drop me off in Port Damali, or at the Gorge, or anywhere, just,” and she swipes at her eyes, “take me with you.”

“You can have it.”

“What?”

He’s surprised by it, too. Surprised it was that simple to cross over that last threshold— all the planning was easier when he was unsure it would come to fruition.

“I’ve been working on it. You’ll be able to pilot it, reach all the controls and everything.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll come with you— I. I can’t always be there, but uh— it’s me. The Traveler. It’s part of me, a version of me. I can try to be it when you need me.”

“Why?”

In his mind’s eye he sees a little girl in the alcove of a hidden beach. Watching with wide eyes as ships cut smooth trails across the water and fade against the horizon, as people gather on the sand in loud clusters and hold each other’s hands to wade into the surf.

Watching the world pass by without her.

“Friendship, I guess. I’m not good at it either.”

—

It’s quiet, is the thing. Falling from the sky.

It’s a wobbly spiral they cut, like a bird broken. Jester’s hands slip from the controls— sweat or blood, he can’t quite tell.

“Jester.”

He doesn’t think she could even say anything— the speed would tear it from her throat into a million shreds. He speaks in her mind instead, the way he hasn’t for a long time.

Below them the wings of the Stormlord burst from the sides, a symphony of metal pinions. They shoot past her and she dives, too slow, too slow.

Beau and Expositor 008 are clinging to him, still. Its rotating claws are deep and the paint, the outer plates are searing away, dripping from its titanium bones. He thinks Beau is probably screaming.

If it were a better day to die he thinks he would spin a speech, his best one. She’d cry, and then laugh through it. He’d go offline in a shower of sparks.

But it’s never a good day to die. Jester is about to black out from hypoxia. The ground lurches to meet them like an eager magnet. He doesn’t even know if she can hear him.

“Love you, Jester.”

No swirl. No green. Just the thing you say to someone beloved if you think it’ll be the last.

It looks beautiful. The invisible paneling unfolds, like a flower in reverse. Heat skates on the surface, red and blue and white.

Deep in the dissolving wires, he closes his eyes. The panels drip invisibility as it burns from them. They close on Jester like a shell, bright and obvious in the sky.

Then, it breaks into spinning shards on the sea.

They float like feathers, silent and empty.

Jester’s father has water in his veins. She goes under and sinks for a long moment. Blood is washed from her nose, her ears, carried away and lost.

Then, she breaks the surface.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr!! come say hi!


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